Aternity Glossary

Release News for Aternity Activity Designer

Aternity Glossary

Active Time

The active time of an application is the time when it is running, in the
foreground, and the user is actively interacting with it (NOT waiting for it
while it is busy trying to respond). It is calculated as the usage time minus the
wait time. A
web application is in
the foreground when both the browser window and the application's tab are in the
foreground.

This is an absolute (not relative) measurement, as it
does not refer to trends or baselines, so it is useful for both acute (recent)
problems and chronic (longer term) issues, and can equally apply across
different applications and locations. Efficient systems have a low percentage of
wait time.

Activity

An activity is a user
action which you monitor for performance, like a mouse click or a key press,
to measure the time until the app's GUI responds, known as the activity
response time.In Aternity, you can compare
response times in any app across the enterprise, and troubleshoot
performance by seeing when they perform slower. For example, you can
monitor the launch of an application, or the time it takes for an application to
respond to a menu choice.

Aternity has many predefined
activities, or you can define your own custom
activity for any action in any application, to monitor the
performance of the key actions which users perform in your business
applications.

An activity measures the time between a user action and the app's
response

Activity, Custom

Activity, Predefined

Aternity comes with
default predefined activities out of the box, for popular business
applications. For example, there are many predefined activities for the
applications in Microsoft Office, like Outlook's open mail or send
mail. There are predefined activities for Acrobat Reader, Microsoft
Office 2007, 2010, 2013 and 2016 (Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, all in
English), Microsoft Skype for Business and Citrix WorxMail for mobile
devices.

Activity Response (Time)

An activity response is the time
taken for an application to complete an activity in seconds. The time also has a
severity status based
on its expected (baselined) time. For example, if the time required to launch an
application is much slower than recent baselined measurements, it might be classed as Major.

Activity response is the time an application takes to perform the
activity

Use the actual response times (not scores) to check the
performance of chronic (long term) problems. You cannot rely on measurements
based on the recent baselines, as those responses would be chronically slow for
some time, thereby skewing baselines to make those times look normal.

Administrator in Aternity

An Administrator of Aternity would typically
include all the capabilities of a power user, but also include adding and managing users
and their privileges in the system.

Agent

Aggregation Server

Ajax Call Times

Allocate, Automatic (License)

Aternity
automatically allocates license units whenever a device requests to report its
performance.By default, Aternity reserves your manually
allocated licenses, then automatically grants requests from any device type until it
reaches the total licenses allowed. You can also limit the number of licenses
for each type of device. For example, if you purchase 1000 license units, you
can set a limit of up to 300 B2E mobile devices.

After manually
or automatically allocating license units to end user devices, they
remain occupied until the user/device stops reporting to
Aternity for 14 consecutive days (non configurable). After
that, Aternity automatically releases the license, making it
available for another user/device.

Allocate, Manual (License)

You can manually allocate a license
unit to reserve it for a specific physical device (via its hostname
or device ID) or virtual session (via its username), to guarantee that Aternity grants a license to
monitor this device.

After manually
or automatically allocating license units to end user devices, they
remain occupied until the user/device stops reporting to
Aternity for 14 consecutive days (non configurable). After
that, Aternity automatically releases the license, making it
available for another user/device.

The formula adds together the number of activities which have the status
Normal, half the number of Minor activities, zero Major activities and minus one times the number of
Critical activities. It then divides this by the total number
of all activities and multiplies by 100.

App (Mobile, Monitored)

A monitored mobile app is a regular iOS or Android app
which has Aternity's
monitoring functionality inside, enabling it to report app performance like
launch times,
errors, crashes, network traffic, and also custom activities
performance, and some mobile device data.

To add
monitoring to a mobile app, you must
embed Aternity's monitoring into the app itself, before it is
encrypted. This automatically starts reporting
a wealth of performance and usage data by default.Use the Aternity Wrapper to add
monitoring without accessing the app's source code, or use the Aternity Mobile SDK if you have access to
the source code, and also want to tweak monitoring with API calls.

Application (Desktop)

A desktop application runs locally on your device, and is
usually launched with a file such as an exe file. You can manage native Windows or
Mac desktop applications, and Java applications that run in the Java virtual
machine.

Application Event

You can customize your own application events to count the
number of times something happened in your application, like the number of
errors, or the number of times people used a specific feature, or to measure the
response time of a non-standard activity.

There are three types of application events:

Application Usage Duration is for
measuring the time to complete a non-typical complex business activity,
like one which includes application response times mixed with time
waiting for the user. For example, use this to measure the time required
for a user to identify a customer at the beginning of a call.

Application Usage Event is for
counting the times when an event occurred, or when it is not easy to
identify the end event of an activity.For example, if you want to track the number of
times when people shared their desktop in Skype for Business, track this
as an application usage event, and assign a
Category to different types of usage
events.

Application Error Events are for
tracking the occurrence of errors. Each error has a
Category, or type of error, and a
Details field, which contains details of the
event or error.

Asset

Aternity

SteelCentral Aternity™ monitors the
performance of applications and devices from the end user perspective, so
you can measure and improve the productivity of your workforce. It
monitors your digital experience on the device by installing a lightweight Agent for End User Devices, which runs in the
background on all monitored
devices in your organization. Our presence on the end user's device
(not remotely on a server) offers unique insights into the performance delays of
applications and
devices as the users themselves experience them.

Aternity builds
a broader picture of efficiency across your entire organization by measuring the
performance of all applications, like their wait times, and the performance of devices, like their
boot times or resource usage. It also
helps keep track of your inventory, and can monitor the impact of large changes
or migrations. It displays these insights using simple, powerful, and intuitive
dashboards, or alternatively you can access the data directly via REST APIs.
This enables IT teams to proactively troubleshoot issues, by exposing delays and
problems from the end users' viewpoint.

Aternity is part
of the wider SteelCentral Suite. Although
traditional APM products provide some aspects of EUEM (End User Experience
Monitoring), only the SteelCentral Suite
gives end-to-end visibility, showing the real user experience, and tracing
problems all the way to the back end servers.

Aternity Activity Designer

Aternity Activity Designer is a visual
tool for creating custom
activities for desktop and mobile applications without requiring any programming knowledge.
Designer enables you to
pinpoint the UI events that mark the start and end of your new activity.

You start with the Aternity Recorder, which captures the OS events when a user performs a business transaction in
an application. Then, you transfer that recording to the Designer. Mark the start and end
of the activity, then export it as a signature file for uploading to Aternity.

Record a business task and then create an activity

Aternity Agent

The Agent for End User Devices monitors end user
experience by measuring device and application performance. It is a small background utility
which runs on each monitored device, and reports its data to Aternity.

Install the Agent for End User Devices locally on a Windows
desktop or laptop.Install the SteelCentral Agent for Mac on an Apple Mac
laptop or desktop.On virtual desktops
(VDIs), install the Agent inside the desktop
image which is dynamically created for every session.Monitor virtual applications (even if you do not
monitor the device which runs the virtual session) by installing the
Agent on the
virtual application server.Mobile devices (iOS and Android) report data from a
monitored app
which has Aternity Mobile
embedded inside.

Types of monitored devices

The Agent for End User Devices runs several services and
processes on your Windows device:

A180AG.exe is the Agent's core
process, performing most of the data collection, operations, and
configuration.

A180CM.exe manages communication between the Agent and Aternity.

A180RS.exe runs under the user's name and collects user experience
data.

A180WD.exe is the Agent watchdog,
a Windows service which checks the Agent is functioning and
communicating properly with Aternity. If it detects a
problem, it restarts the Agent.

A180AA.exe is the back end Windows service of the Aternity Recorder. It only records if an end user manually starts the Recorder (when creating a
custom
activity).

Aternity Dashboard Gateway Server

The Dashboard Gateway acts
as the interface between the Dashboard Server and
the Aternity Management Server, performing
background tasks like preprocessing the data for display in the dashboards, and
maintaining logs, audits and cleanup. It must be on the same computer as the
Dashboard Server. While it has no
user interface of its own, it is crucial to the proper functioning of Aternity.

Aternity Data Source for Portal

Configure the SteelCentral Portal™ to connect to your Aternity Data Source to
view Aternity data in the
Portal alongside data
from other products in the SteelCentral Suite. It is available automatically in AternitySaaS, or you can optionally set it up
in your Aternityon-premise.

Aternity Data Warehouse Server

The Data Warehouse Server is part of the Aternity data flow and responsible
for the initial analysis and processing of the data. It is a central piece in
the Aternity
architecture.The Data Warehouse Server stores the raw data gathered
from the Aggregation Servers, and
aggregates (summarizes) it for the Oracle Database Server and the Aternity Vertica Database Server.It constantly aggregates and re-summarizes data in the
main database in the background, replacing older, more detailed data with
summary data as it ages. Therefore older data typically has limited drill-down
capabilities.

Aternity Docker Components

The Aternity Docker Components Server
is one of the Aternityon-premise components containing a
range of containers which add functionality to Aternity. Most components are
mandatory, but you can choose to add or omit some of those Docker containers
from your deployment.

Aternity Designer

SteelCentral Enterprise License (SaaS)

A SteelCentral Enterprise License
offers complete flexibility to monitor end user devices or backend servers. You
can also use predefined
activities AND create and monitor your own custom activities in
business applications which are critical to your enterprise.

SteelCentral Essentials License (SaaS)

SteelCentral Essentials License
offers a ready-to-go version of SteelCentral™, with a focus on Aternity SaaS's monitoring of end user
devices. You can add applications for enhanced monitoring, but you can only use
predefined
activities. To add monitoring for backend servers and create your own
custom activities
in business applications which are critical to your enterprise, upgrade to SteelCentral Enterprise Licenses.

Aternity Extension for Chrome

The Aternity Extension for Chrome enables Aternity to monitor web
applications which run in the Google Chrome browser. The Agent for End User Devices adds this automatically, but
for older versions of the Agent, you must add this manually from the official Chrome web store. Search for
the Aternity Information Systems Extension.
Administrators can deploy the extension as a standard Group Policy Object
(GPO).

Using Aternity Extension for Chrome to monitor web applications in
Chrome

Aternity Management Server

The Aternity Management Server acts as
Aternity's central server,
which manages and integrates all the components. When users access Aternity to view the dashboards or
configure it, they access this server via a browser.

Aternity on-premise

Aternityon-premise offers all the features
of Aternity with the full
control of housing its servers in your own enterprise network. Aternityon-premise updates approximately
once a year with the features from AternitySaaS at that time. To keep up with
the very latest in Aternity's
(monthly) updates and innovations, switch to Aternity SaaS.

Aternity Oracle Database Server

The Aternity Oracle Database Server is an Oracle database
which hosts the Aternity
system settings, data model and performance data, after the Data Warehouse Server summarized
(aggregated) it.

Aternity Recorder

The Aternity Recorder, which is part of the
Agent for End User Devices, collects the events
which the Agent detects
during an activity, such as mouse clicks or changes in the GUI, while recording
a video of the user's actions.

Use the Recorder as the first step in
creating a new custom
activity, by recording the OS events and video of an end user who
performs that activity. Transfer the recording to
the Aternity Activity Designer and create
an activity by pinpointing its start and end events. You can also use
the Recorder to validate that
the Agent identifies the
start and end events accurately.

Note

The Recorder is
a dormant component of the Agent. The device's end user
must manually enable it.

Aternity REST API Server

The Aternity REST API Server is a
component in Aternityon-premise which allows authorized
users to send REST API queries to
directly extract and analyze Aternity's data without
Aternity's
dashboards. You can combine the data with other data sources if
needed, or transform it as required, then view it in Microsoft Excel, Power
BI, or your own data application.

Aternity SaaS

AternitySaaS offers the full functionality
of Aternity with the
convenience of housing the product's servers in a secure cloud environment, for
extremely fast and simple deployment in your enterprise. With AternitySaaS you automatically receive
monthly updates and innovations of the product, and the chance to shape future
features by signing up to each beta program.There are two variants of AternitySaaS: the full SteelCentral Enterprise License and the
lighter SteelCentral Essentials License.

Aternity Vertica Database Server

The Aternity Vertica Database Server stores the
performance data from the past 31 days in the Vertica
format, which is most efficient for displaying in Aternity dashboards. It
receives its data from the Aternity Docker Components Server.

Aternity Wrapper (for mobile apps)

The Aternity Wrapper
is a command line tool which quickly and automatically adds monitoring features
to your mobile app, without requiring access to the app's source code. A monitored mobile app is a regular iOS or Android app
which has Aternity's
monitoring functionality inside, enabling it to report app performance like
launch times,
errors, crashes, network traffic, and also custom activities
performance, and some mobile device data.With the Aternity Wrapper, you can sign the app at
the same time as applying Aternity's monitoring
functionality, all in a single command.

Attribute

An attribute (or dimension) is a static property of an object which Aternity reports, like a hostname,
or a username.

Attribute, Contextual

Contextual attributes are descriptive properties of a
measurement or activity, like a username, window title or application
name.

Backend Time

Backend time is the time required by all the
servers to process data on the backend, which is part of the overall
response time of
an activity. It starts when the client sends a request
to the target server, when the last message of that request arrives at the
target server side. It ends when the server sends out the first message of
its response.

The backend time for a single request-response pair is from the last
send to its first response minus the round trip time. If the
activity calls a server more than once, or several servers, the reported
time is the combination (union) of all the individual times together. If the
target server calls other back-end servers, Aternity's backend time is the
total (union) of all network times and server times of all back end servers
in that chain, ending when the activity's target server sends its response
to the client. For more server-side visibility, view the transaction details
in SteelCentral AppInternals™.

Definition of backend time in a client-server application

Baselines

A baseline is a threshold which judges whether an activity's response time
is performing as expected, or if it is too slow. Aternity automatically defines two
baselines around the expected response time: a minor baseline which
constitutes a minor departure from the expected performance, and a major baseline which
constitutes a major departure from the expected response time.

Aternity's
baselines use average response
times for a specific activity from the past 10 days (or seven days if
there are too many readings), and requires at least 100 measurements to be
defined. It uses data from either one location or all locations, whichever is
slower, and relies on a normal distribution curve, discarding any data which is
too erratic.

Response times from one user have a major status if they are slower than the
major threshold

Bookmark

Add a bookmark to indicate the beginning and end of an activity in the Aternity Recorder. Use one
bookmark for each occurrence of an activity in your recording, to mark the
approximate time when each activity begins and ends. Later, when you export the
recording to the Aternity Activity Designer, the
bookmarks enable you to quickly locate each activity in the recording.

Boot Times

Aternity monitors
several parallel boot times for Windows devices, some from the Windows Event Log (ID 100),
while others are Aternity's
proprietary calculations. Event ID 100 lists the main path boot duration,
the post boot duration
and their sum: the total boot
time. However, the Event Log does
not log all boots. For example, boots from virtual consoles are not
logged.

Therefore, Aternity's proprietary boot measurements are more robust, as they log the boot times
regardless of speed or virtual consoles. They include the machine boot time and the
user logon time.

Boot time definitions

Breadcrumbs

(Mobile only) Breadcrumbs are the events leading up to a crash in
your monitored mobile app. Aternity Mobile SDK captures these events
and reports them after you restart the app after the crash. You can view the
breadcrumbs for each crash in the Crash Details
dashboard.

Monitored apps collect several breadcrumbs by default,
including the launch
time of the app, the timestamp when the app was last in the
foreground, the timestamp when the app was last moved to the background, and the
names of the last 20 screens shown in the app since its launch. As a mobile app
developer, you can also create your own customized breadcrumbs by inserting
leaveBreadcrumb() in the source code, with your custom text
message to later help troubleshoot the cause of the crash.

Business Activity or Business Transaction

A business activity (or transaction) is an action performed in your business
application which you want to monitor. Use the business transaction as the
basis for creating an activity. For example, a business transaction of opening a
customer record in your application can produce two Open activities, one
in version 2 and another in version 3. You create the activity by specifying
exactly how to do this in your application, like clicking on a menu item, or
pressing a key on the keyboard. Once defined, you can upload the activity to
Aternity to monitor its
performance across your organization.

Business Location

A business location refers to a site (an office
building, campus, or even a part of a building) in your organization which
contains monitored devices. Each location has a city, state, country, and (optionally)
region, and has
specific geographic coordinates to display it on a map.

View an application's performance per location, or all locations in a city to
determine if a problem is common to everyone in that location, to hint at the
cause of the issue. Usually the system automatically determines the location of
a device. If it does not identify a location correctly, manually map locations in the
system with the Active Directory's Site field.
If it cannot pinpoint a location name, it displays as it as Off-Site
or Not Mapped.

On virtual deployments (virtual applications like Citrix
XenApp and virtual desktops like Citrix XenDesktop), Aternity always tries to report the
location of the end user's front-end device by detecting its subnet.

Call Mode

There are two types of calls in Skype for Business or Lync:
Direct between two devices, or
Conference, where more than two devices connect to a
bridge to participate in a call. Each connection to a call appears in the
dashboards as a separate entry.

Call Type

There are two modes of calls in Skype for Business or Lync:
Audio only or
Audio/Video.

Callee

A callee is Microsoft's term for the other participant in a Skype for Business or
Lync call.

Capture Device

A capture device is a microphone, either built-in
or standalone, used for collecting audio input to a Skype / Lync call.

Chrome Extension

Client Time

Client time is the time used by the device itself as part of an
activity to process
data before sending its first message request to the server and after the last
message response arrives back from the server. For example, if an activity
requires rendering graphic elements, or running JavaScript on the client side, this
would be part of the client time. The Agent for End User Devices calculates the client time as
the total activity response
time minus the infra time.

Client time is the time on the device side to process data as part of the
activity response

Contextual

Crash (Mac Application)

Aternity reports a
native Mac app crashing only if it registers the crash in the MacOS system
log.

Crash (Mobile App)

Aternity reports
a crashing monitored mobile
app if it experiences an unhandled exception, or if the operating
system (iOS or Android) tells it to abruptly stop (abort signal).

For every mobile app crash, Aternity collects the exception
code and type of exception, the app's stack trace, and a summary of the crash
information. It also collects any breadcrumbs leading up to
the crash. You can download the memory dump file if needed.

Crash Rate

The crash rate of an application is the average number of
crashes which
occurred in that application during an hour of active usage. It is calculated as
the total number of crashes divided by the total usage time in
hours.

Critical (Activity Status)

Custom Activity

You can create your own custom activities for
any business app by monitoring any user action, like a mouse click or a
key press, and measuring the time until the app's GUI responds.In Aternity, you can compare
response times in any app across the enterprise, and troubleshoot
performance by seeing when they perform slower.For example, define a custom activity to
measure a search for a customer in your CRM, from selecting Search
until displaying the results. Or you can monitor the time check an item in
your inventory, or save an invoice in your financial system.Create a custom activity in the Aternity Activity Designer or the
Aternity Web Activity Creator (early access)
to measure the application's response time. Then you can export the custom
activity as a signature
file to upload it to Aternity.

Create multiple action-response pairs, known as activities, in web apps which run inside
browsers, desktop apps which run
locally on your computer, or mobile apps on Android or iOS.

An activity measures the time between a user action and the app's
response

Custom Attribute

A custom attribute is a property of a
device, location or user that you define, which Aternity does not normally detect.
You can use a custom attribute it to easily group together the items which share
this property, to monitor their performance.For example, you can configure Aternity to report if a device has
disk encryption, to compare the performance of encrypted versus regular
devices.

Custom attributes only display in dashboards if you defined
them for your enterprise. You can define one of the six placeholder fields
(Custom Attribute 1-6), or use one of the predefined attribute names,
like a device's Image Build Number.

Dashboard

A dashboard in Aternity displays performance data
intuitively according to different criteria (break-downs). Each dashboard
typically contains multiple sections, known as widgets, where each section
contains one or more graphs.

Dashboard Server

Data Center Locations

Data Center Locations in Aternity lists the locations of any virtual
application servers (like Citrix XenApp) and VDI hypervisors (like in VMWare
vSphere) which run the application. If the application is deployed both locally
and virtually, one of the locations displays as
Local.

Degradation (Inbound, for calls)

Inbound degradation is the amount of
reduction in the inbound MOS
score which was due to a poor network connection. A high degradation
indicates that the poor network MOS (packet loss, network jitter) played a significant role
in lowering the audio experience.

Degraded Boot Component

The list of degraded boot components is a collection of processes
launched during boot (drivers, applications, optimizations) which took more than
five seconds to load.Aternity collects this information
from the Windows Event Log (event IDs 100-199) in the Application and
Services Logs > Microsoft > Windows > Diagnostics-Performance > Boot
Performance Monitoring section. Windows records the
slowdowns while it boots, shuts down, hibernates or returns from sleep, in the
Windows Event Log.

For example, Event ID 100 shows if a Windows built-in
application or service caused a slowdown; event 101 reveals if an application
caused the slowdown; event ID 102 details any drivers causing a delay; event 106
means that background optimization took longer than usual, and so on.

Department

The Department of a user is their place in the
organization, as per their entry in the Active Directory. The
Department of a monitored device is the department of the user who last
signed in to the device. The Agent for End User Devices accesses this information
only from the device itself, by accessing the network user information from
Windows, and from there to the associated user object, and then to its
associated data in the Microsoft Active Directory.

Designer

Device (Monitored)

A monitored end user
device is a desktop, laptop, smartphone or tablet which reports monitoring
data to SteelCentral Aternity™.You can monitor the performance
of Windows devices (laptops, desktops, tablets), Apple Mac devices
(desktops, laptops), mobile devices (iOS, Android) and virtual sessions (VDI
and virtual applications).Aternity gathers data about the
performance of applications and devices using its Agent for End User Devices which runs in
the background.

Install the Agent for End User Devices locally on a Windows
desktop or laptop.Install the SteelCentral Agent for Mac on an Apple Mac
laptop or desktop.On virtual desktops
(VDIs), install the Agent inside the desktop
image which is dynamically created for every session.Monitor virtual applications (even if you do not
monitor the device which runs the virtual session) by installing the
Agent on the
virtual application server.Mobile devices (iOS and Android) report data from a
monitored app
which has Aternity Mobile
embedded inside.

Types of monitored devices

Device ID (for Apple Mac)

An Apple Mac's device ID is its Hardware
UUID (universally unique identifier), as displayed in
About This Mac > System Report.If some Macs have the same name, use the device ID to
pinpoint a specific device.

Device ID (for Mobile)

For monitored Android apps, the Device
ID is made up of two parts: the first is the WiFi mac address,
and the second is the software-based ANDROID_ID.

For monitored iOS apps the Device ID
is only unique per vendor ID. If your enterprise uses a
single vendor ID to create several apps, then whenever they are on the same
device, they report the same Device ID. But an app from a
different vendor ID (like Citrix WorxMail) on the same device would report a
different Device ID.

Smartphones run
monitored mobile
apps on a small touch screen within a mobile operating system
environment.

Tablets have larger
touch screens, and no built-in keyboard, running iOS or Android. If it runs
Windows, it is defined as a tablet if it is a known model of a Windows pure
tablet (like Microsoft Surface models).

Virtual App
Servers offer multiple users access to a single instance of
an application, for example, with Citrix XenApp.

Virtual
Desktops offer the ability to run an application within a
VDI environment, which is a virtual instance of the entire desktop operating
system (usually Windows).

Dimension

Disconnected (Device Status)

(For Windows and Macs) The status of a device is
Disconnected if Aternity has not received
monitoring data for more than five minutes from this device, but it has received
data within the last 7 days.

This could be caused by powering off the device (may
be company policy to switch off every night), or it may not have a license to report to
Aternity, or it could
point to a problem with the device, like no network connection.

The device continuously tries to reconnect to
Aternity in
ever-increasing intervals, after ½ minute, one minute, two minutes, four
minutes, eight minutes, 16 minutes, 32 minutes, and if it still fails, the
Agent restarts itself and
tries again to connect, restarting this cycle again.

Discovered Application

Drill down

You can drill down on most items in the system's dashboards to jump to
another dashboard with more details about that item. Hover your mouse over a
part of a graph to view its pop-up window containing more information, then
select a drill-down link to switch to another dashboard containing more
detail.

See more by drilling down from an entry in one dashboard to open another
dashboard

Dropped Call

A call is dropped if Skype for Business or Lync ended the call
unexpectedly, without the user manually ending the call. Aternity reports the failure and
its reason.

Data Processing Server (Device Resources)

The DPS is the data processing component. The DPS (Device Resource) is
responsible for parsing and aggregating the device resource measurements, such
as CPU, Memory, Disk usage and WiFi measurements. This data is later stored to
Vertica Database Server for use in the
Analyze dashboards and REST APIs.

Data Processing Server (Installed Software)

The DPS is the data processing component. The DPS (Installed
Software) is responsible for parsing and aggregating the Installed Software
measurements, enabling analysis tasks, such as “who does not have the latest
version installed” or “who already installed the latest OS patch”.

End Point (or Endpoint)

Error (for mobile apps)

When a monitored mobile app running on iOS 9.x or earlier
reports an error (not warning) to the system log, Aternity collects it, along with
the text of the error message and its severity level.

Aternity
monitors all errors from your iOS app in the Apple System Log (ASL), while for
Android, it checks errors reported using the android.util.Log
class and monitored using the logcat tool.

If your iOS app sends debug and error messages using the
NSLog function, they appear in the Apple System Log (ASL)
as a warning (not error), so by default Aternity does not capture these
messages. You can configure the Aternity Mobile SDK to also collect
warnings if required.

Error (for pages in web applications)

Web errors are errors experienced by applications which
receive an error as a response to their HTTP request for a page load, like HTTP
40x errors (like Error 404 Page Not Found), and 50x errors (like
unauthorized access messages) for the whole page (not a missing element like an
image).

Error Rate (for pages in web applications)

The web page error rate is
the percentage of errors out of all
web page loads which cause the page not to load (HTTP error 40x or
50x).This is one
of the elements used when calculating the UXI.

For monitored mobile apps, the web error
rate is the percentage of web
errors (HTTP error 40x or 50x) out of all HTTP requests.

External (SLA Threshold)

The
External threshold represents the maximum response time (in
seconds) of an activity as defined in your official service level agreement
(SLA) with your customers. Any response longer than this threshold is
colored red in the SLA dashboard, since it breaks the
official SLA commitment for this activity. You can configure the
thresholds in Managed Applications > Managed Activities >
Edit.

SLA internal and external thresholds

Failed Call

A call fails if Skype for Business or Lync could not successfully
establish a connection and start. Aternity reports the failure and
its reason as the SIP code and SIP string.

Gateway Server

Good (Status of Score)

Hang Time

Hang time measures the time when an application is listed as
Not responding in the Windows Task Manager while it
is in the foreground (in use). This measurement is used to calculate the wait time of an
application, and the overall UXI.

Health Event (for Applications)

A health event for an application occurs if it crashes, or for web
applications, if it encounters a web error (like if the requested page is not
found). The system monitors application health events for all discovered applications.

Health Event (Hardware)

A hardware health event for a device is a significant
hardware problem on a device which impacts its overall health, like memory
paging, or disk related errors and so on.

Health Event (System, for Devices)

A system
health event for a device is a significant problem at the level of the operating
system which impacts on the device's overall health, like BSODs or other
system crashes. On a remote VDI session, the system reports these
events only while the user is logged in.

Health Alert

Health Index

The health index is a value (0-5) which measures the time
an application hangs, crashes or (for web applications) experiences web errors. If users
experience frequent or severe crashes in the application, this index is lower.

Definition of health index

This index is an absolute (not relative) measurement, since it
does not use baselines which may vary between applications or locations.
However, it is cumulative, not a spot measurement, as each reading relies on and
contains those which came beforehand. Absolute measures allow Aternity to
accurately use a single consistent dimension across several attributes. For
example, it can display this index for a single user on a single application, or
many users on a single application, or many users on many
applications.

HRC (Host Resource Consumption)

The host resource consumption (HRC) is a monitored device's usage
of its resources as a whole, including CPU usage, RAM usage, virtual memory
usage, number of send and receive messages to the network (network I/O), and the
amount of data read and written to the disk (disk I/O).

HRC focuses on the whole device's resource usage, in contrast to
monitoring an application's process resource usage (PRC), which focuses on a
single application's resource consumption.

The Agent for End User Devices reports a
device's highest resource consumers (top processes) only if one of the HRC measurements exceeds
its predefined threshold.By default, the Agent collects the device's
resource usage every two minutes.

Inbound Degradation (for calls)

Inbound Listening MOS

Inbound Network MOS

Incident

An incident is a
call to action about many users suffering poor performance on one activity in an
application, indicating it is a widespread problem.The system creates incidents automatically,
so you can proactively troubleshoot an issue before users even report
it.

This is different from service
desk alerts which refers to issues on the device level triggered by
device health events, not an application's activity.

Configure an activity's incident settings to
change the proportion of suffering users which trigger an incident flag, and
define the email address which receives the automatic alert notifications. Set
the system to trigger an incident if BOTH:

There are at least this number of unique
Windows usernames in this deployment group which suffer poor performance
(activity
status is major).

There is at least this percentage of unique
Windows usernames in this deployment group which suffer poor performance
(activity
status is major).

An incident for an activity indicates several devices in a group are
responding slowly

Incoming Traffic

Incoming traffic is the average amount of data downloaded from
the network to the device during the performance of an activity (between its
start and end). Aternity reports the total
volume of network traffic in KB in both directions while an application
performs an activity.

Incomplete (Activity)

An Incompleteactivity is interrupted
and discarded by the Agent,
because it does not report reliable performance data.Aternity Activity Designer creates default
events that set your activity to Incomplete, and you can
add to those events. For example, you may not want to report performance data
for a failed login, so you can create an incomplete event for that
possibility.

Some examples of events that indicate that an activity is Incomplete
are:

A user clicks a mouse in that Windows process before the activity
completes.

A user types a function key in that Windows process before the activity
completes.

The application loses focus (moves into the background) before the activity
completes.

An expected event within the activity timed out (internal timer), or the
overall activity
response took too long (default overall timeout is 180
seconds).

Index (Health)

Index (Performance)

Infra Time

Infra time is the total time spent outside the client. It
starts with the first request to the server and ends when the final response
arrives at the client.The infra time is calculated as the total of network time and backend time. If there
are multiple overlapping calls to one or more servers, the total infra time is
the combination (union) of all server and network times.

Definition of infra time

Internal (SLA Threshold)

The Internal threshold is the response time (in
seconds) of an activity which would be your early warning, showing you are at
risk of exceeding your official service level agreement (SLA) with your
customers. Any response longer than this threshold is colored yellow in the SLA dashboard, as it warns you risk
breaking the SLA commitment for this activity. A customer service representative can configure this
threshold in the activity's monitor.

SLA internal and external thresholds

Laptop

In Aternity, Laptops are Windows devices with a battery and a
built-in keyboard (including all Windows hybrid tablet/laptop models), or for
Macs, any monitored laptop running
macOS or OS X.

Latency (for remote displays)

The remote display latency is the average time taken for the round
trip of a network data packet to travel between the front line user and a
virtual server (both ways).Practically, it is the time between performing an action
in a virtual session on the front line user's machine, then sending that
action to the virtual desktop server (VDI) or virtual application server,
and then viewing that action back on the front line terminal again. This
does NOT measure the time for the application to respond.The Agent retrieves the session latency from Windows every 15 seconds and sends an
average to Aternity every
minute.

For example, if a user types the character
'g' in a text editor which runs on a virtual
application server, when the remote session sends this action to the virtual
server, the remote display latency is the lag time between typing
'g' to seeing the 'g' on the
screen.

Remote display latency is the time in both directions from the front line
user to the virtual server

Launch Time

An application's launch time, which
Aternity measures
automatically for all
Windows applications and monitored mobile apps, starts when the process
begins, and ends when it is ready to receive user input. In Windows,
this is also when it finishes creating a window with a title bar. If a user
double-clicks a document which also launches the app, the launch time would
include BOTH opening the application AND the time to open the document, which
may be significant if the document is on a slow network or it is a large or
complex file.

Legacy Location Mapping

License Units

Aternity
automatically allocates license units whenever a device requests to report its
performance. There are several types of devices which use different license
units:

Types of monitoring licenses depending on the type of reporting
device

By default, Aternity reserves your manually
allocated licenses, then automatically grants requests from any device type until it
reaches the total licenses allowed. You can also limit the number of licenses
for each type of device. For example, if you purchase 1000 license units, you
can set a limit of up to 300 B2E mobile devices.

Type

Units

Description

Physical devices

1 unit

This license monitors the performance of a single end user device by deploying the
Agent for End User Devices
locally, which reports metrics to Aternity. It can be
Windows or Mac, as a laptop, desktop, or surface PC. It requires
a single license unit.

Monitor physical end user devices with the Agent for End User Devices
locally

Virtual desktop users (VDI)

1 unit per username

This license reports the performance inside a single end user virtual desktop (VDI) to
Aternity,
where the VDI desktop image contains the Agent for End User Devices. All VDI
sessions for a single user require one license unit.

Embed the Agent for End User Devices in a virtual
desktop image to monitor its performance

Virtual app sessions

¼ unit per session (or one unit for four sessions)

This license reports the performance of a frontline end user virtual app session to
Aternity.
Deploy the Agent for End User Devices on a virtual app server like Citrix XenApp. Each named user
running one or more monitored sessions requires a quarter (¼) of
a license unit.

(From Agent 11) To monitor virtual app
sessions (not VDI), you must also add the Virtual App
Servers license (five units) to connect to this
server.

Monitor activities in virtual apps

Virtual app servers (from Agent 11 only)

5 units per server

(From Agent 11 only) This license
reports the resource usage and latency of a Citrix XenApp server
as a whole to Aternity. Deploy
the Agent for End User Devices on a
XenApp server, where each server requires five license
units.

Monitor virtual app server resources

Mobile devices B2E / B2C

B2E: 1 unit for one device

B2C: 1 unit for 100 devices

This license reports performance of one or more monitored mobile
apps to Aternity, where
each iOS or Android device reports a unique device
ID. One B2E device requires one license unit, but for B2C
apps, one device requires one hundredth (1/100) of a unit.

JVMs on app servers

35 units per JVM process

This license allows the Backend Agent
to monitor the performance and usage of JVM processes and report
metrics to AppInternals. Each
monitored JVM process on a server requires 35 license units. For
example, if one server hosts five monitored JVM processes, it
requires 35 x 5 = 175 license units.

Deploying this also includes the Backend
server license for this computer.

App servers with .NET

35 units per server

This license allows the Backend Agent
to monitor the resource usage and performance of all running
.NET processes on this server and reports metrics to AppInternals. Each
server requires 35 license units, for all .NET processes on that
server. For example, a single server hosting five monitored .NET
processes requires the license units for just one server: 1 x 35
= 35 license units.

Deploying this also includes the Backend
server license for this computer.

Containers

5 units per container

This license allows the Backend Agent
to monitor the performance of sever-side app components within a
single Docker instance (known as a container), and reports
metrics to AppInternals. It
requires five license units.

Deploying this also includes the Backend
server license for this computer.

Flow Generation

3 units per server

This license allows the Backend Agent
on a server to monitor traffic and generate network flows (known
as SteelFlow Net) for reporting to NetProfiler.

This is especially useful for cloud servers, where you may not have access to routers
which would normally generate those network flows for SteelCentral NetProfiler™. Each
server with flow generation uses three license units (learn more).

Deploying this also includes the Backend
server license for this computer.

Packet Mirroring

4 units per server

This license allows the Backend Agent
to monitor and forward network packets to and from this server
to SteelCentral AppResponse™ Cloud
for further packet analysis. Each server with packet mirroring
uses four license units (learn more).

Deploying this also includes the Backend
server license for this computer.

Backend servers

2 units per server

This license allows the Backend Agent
to monitor the server's resource usage, network usage, and
process usage. It requires two license units.

If the server already has JVM or .NET monitoring, there is no
need for additional units to monitor the server's resources.

Listening MOS

Literal

A literal is an exact description of an event which you want to capture
to mark the start or end of your activity. A literal contains event properties
along with details of those properties. Edit the properties and details in Aternity Activity Designer, to accurately
define your custom
activity. When a user performs an activity on a monitored device, if
the literals of the start and end events match the literals picked up by the
Agent, it reports the
activity to Aternity.

Load Time (of Ajax calls in web applications)

The response time of a web page's Ajax call starts when
the browser sends a triggered JavaScript or XML script to the server, and ends
when the browser finishes receiving the end of response from the server. The
system does not measure any client time which may be associated directly with an Ajax
call.

For example, when a web page auto-saves text which you
entered, every auto-save is an automatic Ajax call to the server, which ends
when it receives a response that the save was successful or failed.

Load Time (of pages in web applications)

The web page load time is the time required for a web page
to load and finish rendering in a browser, from sending a URL request to when
the page's events finish loading and it has a status of Completed. This
measurement does NOT include the time to load additional page elements which
occur after the main page has loaded, such as iframes that are embedded separate
web pages, AJAX calls after the page is complete, or bookmarks with
# in the URL). It does include AJAX calls that the
page makes before it is complete.

Web page load time

Location

Location Mapping

Location mapping determines the
location name
(site, office or campus) of a monitored device as it is displayed in the
dashboards with minimum or even zero configuration from your Active
Directory, including finding its city, state, country, and map
coordinates.

There are two modes of location mapping: either site-based (default) or
legacy (never
both).Use the Location Mapping screen to
manually configure location
names to be different from its Site name in
Microsoft Active Directory, or to manually assign a city, state, country, region, or coordinates for
each location.

Site-based
location mapping (zero configuration) is available only for devices running
Agent for End User Devices 9.x or
later.

Location Mapping, Legacy

Legacy location mapping determines the location name of a device based on one of
its attributes, like a part of its hostname or its subnet, by mapping that value
to a location name.

Location Mapping, Site-Based

Site-based location mapping determines the location name of a device as the
Site name from your Microsoft Active Directory. This
is the default method for new Aternity deployments.

Machine Boot

Machine boot is part
of a device's boot time, starting a fraction of a second after the Windows
logo appears, and ending with the Windows sign in screen.Agent queries
Windows Kernel-PnP (NOT the Event Log) for the BootStart >
Start event to mark the start of this time, and ends when
the Windows sign in screen appears (or the automatic sign in process
starts).

The Windows Event Log does not list every
single boot (for example boots from virtual console sessions or boots which
complete very quickly), hence the need to track boot times in a more robust
way.

Boot time definitions

Main Path Boot Duration

The main path boot duration is the time elapsed from the appearance of the
animated Windows logo until the appearance of the desktop.Agent queries
Windows Event Log in the Diagnostics > Performance >
Windows section, ID 100 for the
MainPathBootTime parameter.

Major (Activity Baseline Threshold)

The Major baseline
threshold is a response
time for a specific activity which is significantly slower than expected. Anything
slower than this threshold changes the activity's status to major (), which is a call to action, because it is a major
departure from the expected performance time. By default, the major threshold is
set at the slowest 3% of all response times (97 percentile) for each activity in
each location.

Aternity's
baselines use average response
times for a specific activity from the past 10 days (or seven days if
there are too many readings), and requires at least 100 measurements to be
defined. It uses data from either one location or all locations, whichever is
slower, and relies on a normal distribution curve, discarding any data which is
too erratic.

Response times slower than the major threshold have a status of major

Managed Application

Measurement

A measurement is a quantitative dynamic metric of an object which Aternity reports, and therefore
needs consistent monitoring. For example, the time for an activity's
response is a measurement. This is different from attributes, which are
properties of an object, like a hostname or application name.

Measurement Time

An activity's measurement time is the time stamp when the
Agent for End User Devices on the device noted
the occurrence of the activity. The time stamp is translated to the time zone of
the Aggregation Server. This is
different from the server analysis
time.

Messaging Broker Component (Kafka)

The Messaging Broker component is
built on top of the Kafka infrastructure and serves as the messaging system
between various Aternity
components responsible for collecting, analyzing, aggregating and storing the
collected data.

Minor (Activity Baseline Threshold)

The Minor baseline
threshold is a response
time for a specific activity which is slower than expected. Anything slower than this
threshold changes the activity's status to minor (), because
it is a minor departure from the expected performance time. By default, the
minor threshold is set at the slowest 10% of response times (90 percentile) for
each activity in each location. If the activity is faster than this time, its
status becomes normal
().

Aternity's
baselines use average response
times for a specific activity from the past 10 days (or seven days if
there are too many readings), and requires at least 100 measurements to be
defined. It uses data from either one location or all locations, whichever is
slower, and relies on a normal distribution curve, discarding any data which is
too erratic.

Response times slower than the minor threshold have a status of minor

Mobile App (Monitored)

Monitor

A monitor is a container in Aternity for
one or more activities.
It contains several items, including: the definition of an activity, stored as a
signature file, the
groups of devices where this monitor is active, the expected performance times
(thresholds) of the activity, and the rules when to raise an incident related to
this activity. There are two types of thresholds: the major and minor thresholds which
determine the status of the activity, and the internal and external thresholds,
which determine whether it complies with your SLA.

A monitor contains several items defining an activity and its
statuses

A Power User of Aternity typically configures a monitor.

Monitored Activity

Monitored Application

Monitored Device

MOS (or Combined MOS)

The Mean Opinion Score (MOS) is Microsoft's quality measurement (0-5)
of a user's experience in a Skype or Lync call. It assesses quality by measuring the
network jitter, background noise, dropped packets, and other factors to score the
user experience for a single device in a single call. Each device in a call has an
inbound MOS and an outbound MOS.

MOS, Inbound (or Inbound Listening MOS)

The inbound MOS (or inbound listening MOS) for someone in a
call is the MOS score
of the incoming audio or video, showing if you clearly hear others in the call
over background noise or a poor connection (inbound network MOS). The inbound MOS of a listener is
the same as the outbound
MOS of the speaker.For example, if the other person spoke softly, or there
was poor network speeds, or a dog was barking, it would lower the inbound
MOS.

MOS, Outbound

The outbound MOS for someone in a call is the MOS score of your
outgoing audio or video, showing if others clearly hear you in the call over
background noise or a slow network (inbound network MOS).For example, if you have a poor microphone or speak
quietly far away from the mic, it would reduce your outbound MOS score for that
call.

Network MOS

Network I/O Write

Outgoing traffic is the average amount of data uploaded from
the device to the network during the performance of an activity (between its
start and end). Aternity reports the total
volume of network traffic in KB in both directions while an application
performs an activity.

Network I/O Read

Incoming traffic is the average amount of data downloaded from
the network to the device during the performance of an activity (between its
start and end). Aternity reports the total
volume of network traffic in KB in both directions while an application
performs an activity.

Network Time

Network time is the total time (union) taken for all
messages to cross the network in either direction, between the client and the
target server, while performing an activity. This does NOT include the time used for
processing the request on the server (backend time).

Network time is the time for all messages to cross the network and back as
part of an activity response

Normal (Status of Activity)

Normal refers to
the status of an activity when its
performance is good, since its activity response time is within the defined baseline performance of
this activity. By default, a normal response time is in the fastest 90% (90
percentile) for each activity in each location. It is usually colored green
. If the activity is slower than this time (the
slowest 10%), its status becomes minor (), or for the slowest 3% (97 percentile) it becomes
major ().

Normalized Percentage

A normalized percentage always ensures that the score never exceeds
+/-100%.

Not Reporting (Device Status)

(For monitored mobile apps only) The status of a device is
Not Reporting if Aternity has not received
monitoring data from this mobile device for at least 10 minutes.This could happen if the device is shut
down, or the device has no network data connection, or the mobile app is running
in the background or is not running at all.

Off-Site

If Aternity uses
site-based location
mapping, it reports the location as Off-site
when the device is not connected to the Microsoft Active Directory. For legacy location mapping,
if it cannot determine the location name, it reports it as Not
Mapped. A mobile device with no location name reports as
Off-site if it is on 3G or 4G/LTE, or Not
Mapped if it is on WiFi.

On-Site

A desktop or laptop's location is On Site when it is connected to
your Microsoft Active Directory.

Outbound MOS

Outgoing Traffic

Outgoing traffic is the average amount of data uploaded from
the device to the network during the performance of an activity (between its
start and end). Aternity reports the total
volume of network traffic in KB in both directions while an application
performs an activity.

Page Error (for web applications)

Page Load Time (for web applications)

Performance Index

The performance index is a value (0-5) which measures an
application's responsiveness. If users must wait frequently or for long periods
for an application to respond, its performance index is lower. It is calculated
from the usage time and
wait time.

Definition of performance index

This index is an absolute (not relative) measurement, since it
does not use baselines which may vary between applications or locations.
However, it is cumulative, not a spot measurement, as each reading relies on and
contains those which came beforehand. Absolute measures allow Aternity to
accurately use a single consistent dimension across several attributes. For
example, it can display this index for a single user on a single application, or
many users on a single application, or many users on many
applications.

Pilot Group

A pilot
group is a custom set of users or devices which undergo a change, like
migrating to Windows 10, or updating the type of hard disk to SSD. You
must assign a user or device to only one pilot group at a time, to ensure that
you do not perform multiple changes at the same time.

Poor (Status of Score)

Post Boot Duration

The post
boot duration is the time elapsed from the appearance of the desktop until
the CPU reaches 80% idle for 10 consecutive seconds.The Agent queries
Windows Event ID 100, located in the Diagnostics > Performance >
Windows section of the log, and reports the measurement
stored as BootPostBootTime.

Power User

A Power User of Aternity can view
dashboards, but also configure the system, by adding applications to be
monitored, creating a test group, or mapping locations in the system.

PRC (Process Resource Consumption)

An application's process resource consumption (PRC) is the percentage of CPU
and memory used by a managed
application on a device at that moment (dynamic measurement).Aternity
constantly monitors the resource usage of managed applications, regardless of
whether a user performed an activity.

PRC focuses on a single application's resource usage, in contrast to HRC which is the combined
resources of all apps on the device, reporting its top processes when they become
too high.

Raw Data Server (Cassandra)

The Raw Data Component houses the
Cassandra Database and stores the detailed information and measurements for
monitored devices
for a maximum of 7 days. You view this data in the Troubleshoot
Device and in the Installed Software
dashboards.

Region

You can optionally define a region in Aternity to group together several
locations under a
single label, like the geographical region of EMEA, North America
or even Southern Europe, South-Western US any other grouping you
choose.

A Power User of Aternity can define regions when
defining the shape of your organization.

Reliability Grade

Reliability Value

The stability index (used to be reliability value) is a
Windows score (from 1 to 10) of a PC's
overall stability (search in Windows for the Windows Reliability
Monitor). As the number and severity of errors increases, it
lowers the stability index. Aternity displays the average for
the previous day, or, if unavailable, it shows the most recent daily average.
The server versions of Windows do not have this measurement, and therefore would
not report it to Aternity.

Response Time (of an Ajax call on a web page)

Response Time (of a web page load)

Role

A role is a set of abilities and actions (known as privileges) which a user
can perform in Aternity. You
can assign several roles to a user or group of users, to allow them to perform
those actions.

Round Trip Time (RTT)

Round trip time (RTT) is the time between sending a message to the
server and the return of its echo acknowledgment back to the client.Each request from the client generates an acknowledgment from the
server that it received the request. RTT measures the time of a single request
and its acknowledgment. It does NOT include the response of the request, which
would require the server to process the request. RTT forms part of the
response time of an
activity.

A single message and its acknowledgment, before any server processing

The Agent for End User Devices retrieves the
RTT of each server connection from the logs of the Windows TCP/IP
driver.

SDA

Server Analysis Time

Displays the timestamp when the Aternity servers received the
report of an activity
and analyzed it. This is different from the activity's measurement time.

SDA Server (Service Desk Alert)

A service desk alert (SDA) defines email or ServiceNow alerts on top of
Aternity health
events.A service desk alert (SDA) indicates that
the same health event
occurred several times on the same device within a certain time. Aternity sends SDAs to draw
attention to devices which suffer repeated application errors, system crashes or
hardware issues.For example, you can receive an SDA whenever a device
suffers from the same crash more than twice a week. The types of alerts
are:

HD FailureWindows event ID 52 occurs
with an imminent failure of the hard disk.Back up your data
immediately, then use a scanning tool to detect problems.
For example, if a disk is too hot, switch off the PC and
disconnect the power of that hard disk until you replace
it.

Application Crash (after hang)(Windows) Event ID
1002 occurs when a user manually forced an application's
process to close after it stopped responding. (Mac) Aternity uses the system log to determine when a user has manually
forced an application's process to close after it stopped
responding.To resolve, note any
common actions leading to the hang, then consult the app
vendor's support site.

Battery Wear(Windows laptops
only) Aternity checks if the battery capacity drops below a threshold
(default is 50%), compared with the vendor's factory
settings. This indicates that a full battery charge drains
much faster than it should.To resolve, replace
the battery.

HD Bad BlocksWindows event ID 7 occurs
with a corrupted block of data on the hard disk. If many bad
sectors develop, the drive may fail and needs
attention.Replace a physically
damaged disk immediately. For 'soft' or logical bad sectors,
you can use Windows Disk Check.

Low Disk SpaceAternity creates this event if the device's system disk has less
than 5% free space, or less than 500MB available, which
limits the size of virtual memory. To resolve, free some disk space (empty trash, remove
unused apps) or increase its capacity.

Overheat Related ShutdownWindows event ID 86 occurs
when the device shuts down due to overheating (critical
thermal event).It indicates a hardware
problem, like a dusty CPU, broken fan or obstructed air
vent.Turn off your computer,
clean the heat sinks, and make sure that air circulates
properly.

System Crash(Windows) Aternity reports a system crash when Windows created a memory dump
file after a BSOD. Aternity analyzes the Windows dump and extracts data. (Macs) Aternity reports a system crash when it detected a kernel panic
from the macOS system logs.To troubleshoot, view the
details of the event and research further on the name of the
process or module and its error codes.

Signature File

A signature is an XML file created in the Aternity Activity Designer, which contains the core
definition of a custom
activity, including its start event and end event. After you
create the signature, upload it into Aternity to monitor the activity
whenever a user performs it on a monitored device.

Signature file containing details of a custom activity

Site-Based Location Mapping

SLA Thresholds

An SLA threshold is the activity response time
specified in your service level agreement (SLA). The application provider
commits as part of their service that it performs smoothly for everyone by
assuring that all its activities respond within certain performance times. There
are two types of SLA thresholds: internal and external.

SLA internal and external thresholds

Software Change Event

A software change event indicates whether the software was installed,
uninstalled or updated. There are several types of software change
events:

Application: displays applications that you can remove
in the Windows Uninstall or change a program Control
Panel, and system components that do not appear there, such as Configuration
Manager Client.

OS Update displays Windows updates, such as patches,
hotfixes and service packs. It does not display OS upgrades, such as Windows
7 to Windows 10.

Stability Index

The stability index (used to be reliability value) is a
Windows score (from 1 to 10) of a PC's
overall stability (search in Windows for the Windows Reliability
Monitor). As the number and severity of errors increases, it
lowers the stability index. Aternity displays the average for
the previous day, or, if unavailable, it shows the most recent daily average.
The server versions of Windows do not have this measurement, and therefore would
not report it to Aternity.

Status (of an Activity)

The status of an activity is based on one response time compared to the recent expected
(baselined)
response time. The statuses are measured in severity: Normal, Minor, Major or Critical. For example, if the response to a mouse click is much slower than
it should be, the system assigns it a status of Major or
Critical. Baselines are defined automatically by the
system as thresholds, derived from the typical response times for that activity
(major threshold
and minor
threshold).

Status (of a Device)

Status (of a Score)

The status of a score is an Apdex name and color
associated with the value of the score: Good (green
), Fair (yellow ), Poor (orange ), or Unacceptable (red ). This can apply to an activity score, as well as
other scores in the system.

Apdex-inspired score

Status (MOS Score, SLA)

The status of a combined MOS score is its SLA status: above 3 is
Satisfied (green ), between 2 and 3 is
Dissatisfied (yellow ), and below 2 is Very
dissatisfied (orange ). If the call failed, Aternity gives it a red status, but if it was less than a minute or without
audio, it assigns None (colored gray ), because it was not possible to assign a score. If the call ends
unexpectedly (dropped), Aternity lowers its status by one level, so that a dropped call with a
Satisfied status becomes
Dissatisfied.

Status (SLA of an Activity)

The SLA status of an activity determines if the response time complies
with the SLA requirement (colored green ), or if it crossed the internal SLA threshold
showing you risk breaking the SLA (colored yellow ), or if it crosses the external SLA threshold
showing you have broken your SLA (colored red ).

SteelCentral Aternity

Stopped (Device Status)

(For Windows and Macs) The status of a device is
Stopped if its Agent behaves unusually (like high
CPU or memory usage), and therefore it automatically shuts down. Contact
Customer Services.

(For mobile devices)
Aternity Mobile reports a status
Stopped when it does not collect performance data,
but can still receive commands from the Aggregation Server.

Tagged Event (for Mobile Apps)

You can tag an event to monitor custom activities in your
mobile app by inserting a call to the tagging API.

A custom activity for mobile
apps starts and ends when the app reports specific events which match the events
of an activity's signature file. If Aternity already reports these
events by default, you do not need to add manual API calls. However, for some
custom activities, you must manually tag and report those events using API calls.

Threshold

Timeframe

The Timeframe menu in the top row of the dashboard
determines the start time of the data displayed on the screen. The start times
can include:

Field

Description

Today

Displays data starting from 00:00AM today in the time zone
of the Aternity Management Server.

Yesterday

Displays data
starting from 00:00AM yesterday according to the time zone
of the Aternity Management Server.

Last 6 Hours

Shows data starting from exactly
six hours ago, displaying
it summarized (aggregated) according to the view you
selected.

Last 24 Hours

Shows data starting exactly
this time yesterday, displaying
it summarized (aggregated) according to the view you
selected.

Last 48 Hours

Displays data starting exactly
this time two days ago, displaying
it summarized (aggregated) according to the view you
selected.

Last 60 / 120 Minutes

Displays data starting from 60 or 120 minutes ago.

Last 7 Days

Displays data starting from 00:00AM seven days ago in the
time zone of the Aternity Management Server.

Previous Week

Displays data from 00:00AM on Sunday morning to
23:59 on the most recent Saturday night according to the
time zone of the Aternity Management Server. Use
this view to compare consistent weekly results.

Last 14 Days

Displays data from exactly this
time 14 days ago, displaying
it summarized (aggregated) according to the view you
selected.

Last 30 / 90 Days

Displays data from exactly this
time 30 days ago, displaying
it summarized (aggregated) according to the view you
selected.

Custom

Select your own start time from the calendar drop-down menu.

Total Boot Time

(Windows) The total boot
time on a Windows device starts from the time the Windows logo appears until
the desktop appears and all components are loaded.Agent queries
Windows Event Log (ID 100) for the BootTime parameter,
calculated as the sum of main path boot and post boot times, located in the
Diagnostics > Performance > Windows section of
the log.

Windows boot time definitions

(Macs) The total boot time on a Mac device starts when
the system logs the start of the boot, and ends when the system is ready for
sign in.

Total Usage Time

Traffic

Transaction (in AppInternals)

A transaction in AppInternals follows
an application's single request to an application server on its path through one
or more back end servers (or tiers), monitoring the performance of individual
calls at each stage. If an activity makes several calls to servers, it generates several back
end transactions.

Unacceptable (Status of Score)

Unavailable (Activity)

An Unavailableactivity displays in
Aternity as Critical (red ) when the activity did not complete successfully.
Often this happens when the process loses focus (into the background), or there
was an unexpected key press or mouse click. This can also occur when an expected
event within the activity did not occur in time (internal timeout), and the
signature developer chose to inform the system by setting it to
Unavailable.

Usage Time

The usage time of an application is the
total time it is running, in the foreground, and being used. This includes
the wait time, the
time a user spends waiting for the application to respond.For web applications, the usage time is when both the
browser window and the application's tab are in the
foreground.

Definition of usage time

This is an absolute (not relative) measurement, as it
does not refer to trends or baselines, so it is useful for both acute (recent)
problems and chronic (longer term) issues, and can equally apply across
different applications and locations. Efficient systems have a low percentage of
wait time.

User Activity

User Experience Index (UXI)

User Logon Boot Time

User logon measures a part
of the boot time, starting when you press OK at the
Windows sign in screen and ending when the Windows desktop Start button
appears.The Agent queries
Windows Shell-Core (NOT the Event Log) for the
Explorer_StartMenu_Ready event to mark the end of
this time.

The Windows Event Log does not list every
single boot (for example boots from virtual console sessions or boots which
complete very quickly), hence the need to track boot times in a more robust
way.

Boot time definitions

UXI (User Experience Index)

The User Experience Index (UXI) is a value
(0-5) which measures the overall performance and health of applications,
based on the number of crashes per hour out of the total usage time, the
percentage hang
time out of the total usage time, and the percentage wait time out of
the total usage time. For web applications, it also uses the percentage of web page
errors out of all page loads, and the average page load
time.

For each element of the UXI, Aternity determines a narrow range of
meaningful results, beyond which it is flattened to either zero or the maximum. For
example, applications should have 0% hang time, so anything above, say, 5% would be
unacceptable, reducing the hang time index to zero, which would drastically lower
the overall UXI score for that application.

Definition of UXI

This index is an absolute (not relative) measurement, since it
does not use baselines which may vary between applications or locations.
However, it is cumulative, not a spot measurement, as each reading relies on and
contains those which came beforehand. Absolute measures allow Aternity to
accurately use a single consistent dimension across several attributes. For
example, it can display this index for a single user on a single application, or
many users on a single application, or many users on many
applications.

Vertica Database Server

Vertica Scheduler

The Vertica Scheduler is
responsible for creating the time-sensitive rollup aggregations in Vertica Database Server. As data gets older,
hourly and daily aggregations are being created storing the RAW data and more
compact structures. When using the Aternity dashboards, depending on
the time range selection, Aternity will automatically route
you to the relevant aggregation. Vertica Scheduler runs periodical tasks,
such as hourly and daily aggregation, installed app snapshot calculation, and
statistic computation.

Vertica Writer

The Vertica Writer
component is responsible for aggregating, indexing and summarizing the analytic
data that arrives from various Aternity servers and writing it
into the Vertica Database Server.

Wait Time

The wait time of a Windows application is defined as
the time users spend waiting for the application to respond when it is actively
running and in use (part of the usage time).The total wait time is calculated as the
time covered by the following components (which may overlap): the hang time when an
application is not responding, or when the mouse pointer has a busy icon
(Windows devices). For web applications, the
wait time is the web page
load time when both the browser window and its tab are in the
foreground.

Definition of wait time on a Windows or web application

(For
monitored
mobile apps only) , the wait time covers the following components which may overlap: the launch
time of the app, the time spent waiting for the app to switch from the
background to the foreground, the time required for a web page to load within
an app, and the time the user spends waiting for the app's main thread to
respond.

For Mac apps, wait time is the time during
which the app's main UI thread is not as responsive as it should be (slower
performance).

This is an absolute (not relative) measurement, as it
does not refer to trends or baselines, so it is useful for both acute (recent)
problems and chronic (longer term) issues, and can equally apply across
different applications and locations. Efficient systems have a low percentage of
wait time.

Web Activity Creator (early access)

The Aternity Web Activity Creator
(WAC) (early access)
enables you to quickly and intuitively create custom activities for
web applications
directly from the web page. The WAC is an interactive Google
Chrome extension that opens as a floating sidebar next to your web page. It
offers a simple workflow to create your custom activities all on one
PC.

Aternity Web Activity Creator displays as a sidebar next to the
web application

Web Page Monitoring (WPM)

White List (for web applications)

While Aternity
monitors all web
applications which run on monitored devices, it only lists the site names if they
are business-related (on our white list). It also lists the managed web applications,
and any internal (intranet) web sites whose web servers are inside the
enterprise network (or VPN). Aternity does NOT expose all
visited websites, as this contravenes our privacy commitments. Any web pages
which are not on the white list appear under the generic title Web
browsing to preserve employees' privacy. To view a web site's
performance in the dashboards, add it as a managed application.